Love Letter (by Nick Cave)

Before listening

Connect the rhyming words – two pairs are only semi-rhymes:

Hand

Prayer

Envelope

Name

Letter

Hill

Words

Say

Storms

Mind

Wind

Planned

Rain

Get her

Burst

Will

Forms

Way

Bear

Hope

Which are the semi-rhymes? Good songs often have a few of these – why?

Listen:

Love Letter 

 Read lyrics while listening:

 I hold this letter in my hand

A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer
I hope it does as I have planned
Losing her again is more than I can bear

I kiss the cold, white envelope
I press my lips against her name
Two hundred words. We live in hope
The sky hangs heavy with rain

Love Letter Love Letter
Go get her Go get her
Love Letter Love Letter
Go tell her Go tell her

A wicked wind whips up the hill
A handful of hopeful words
I love her and I always will
The sky is ready to burst

Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
Said something I did not mean to say
It all came out the wrong way

Love Letter Love letter
Go get her Go get her
Love Letter Love letter
Go tell her Go tell her

Rain your kisses down upon me
Rain your kisses down in storms
And for all who'll come before me
In your slowly fading forms

I'm going out of my mind
Will leave me standing in
The rain with a letter and a prayer
Whispered on the wind

Come back to me
Come back to me
O baby please come back to me

The songwriter like to create ‘images’ with words. How do verbs help him to do this?

He also likes alliteration (repeating the same sound from word to word) for example: Love Letter Love letter / Go get her Go get her

Find more examples 

In what way does this song bring language, emotion and nature together?

How does the song reflect on male attitudes towards relationships?

(Advanced) The Fight For Rapanui

The famed monolithic Moai statues in Easter Island are symbols of the land’s mysterious past.

Insert these into the gaps:

1. a people of Polynesian descent

2. the Rapa Nui Parliament says

3. But among the Rapa Nui people

4. in part because of tax exemption

5. a pro-independence organisation

6. a fisherman who with his wife

7. Chile’s commissioner to Easter Island

8. the head of the Council of Elders

9. While the sheep roamed freely

10. claiming the land belongs to them

Centuries ago, the Rapa Nui, ______________________, faced the threat of extinction as the island was on the brink of ecological collapse.

In 1888, Chile annexed the South Pacific Island but until 1953 it allowed a Scottish company to manage the island as a giant sheep ranch. _____________________, the Rapa Nui were confined to the town. They revolted in 1964, obtaining Chilean citizenship and the right to elect their own mayor.

Now, Chilean colonisers are threatening to wipe the indigenous culture out of existence. A wave of recent immigration to the South Pacific Island means that two out of every three inhabitants are from mainland Chile.

The government of Chile says it is committed to a four-year, $60million-development plan for the island. New luxury hotels are wooing rich Chileans into town, a glimpse of what critics say will foster an income gap. Chilean migrants come to the island ________________________. Tourists and mainland Chileans flock to Easter Island to enjoy the beaches on one of the world’s most remote islands.

____________________, calls for independence are growing louder and protests in the past year have turned bitter and violent.

Inspired by a wave of Polynesian islands obtaining certain degrees of political autonomy, the Rapa Nui are demanding rights to govern their land. Leviante Araki, president of the self-styled Rapa Nui Parliament, ________________________, has challenged Chilean rule and is taking the fight to the mainland courts to seek dependence.

Last year, the Rapa Nui Parliament "crowned" Valentino Riroroko Tuki, the 81-year-old grandson of the last monarch, as the new king, an indication to Chile that it wants to void the annexation treaty. The 1888 treaty, ______________________, removed the Rapa Nui from their ancestral land and confined their movements.

The Rapa Nui want better healthcare, proper basic infrastructure like water and electricity and preservation of their culture. And they are taking their cause to the international level.

Rapa Nui squatters like Lorenzo Tepano, _______________________, lives in a wooden shack in the Rapa Nui National Park, refuses to move. He wants to stay in what he claims is his own land. 

In 2010, the dissension came to a head when Chilean security forces violently evicted the prominent Hitorangi clan and Tuko Tuki clan who had occupied buildings and sites, ______________________. Armed Chilean troops and police reportedly opened fire on unarmed Rapa Nui civilians and left protesters with blood-stained wounds. The captured images drew admonition from the United Nations over the use of force to resolve the island's problems. But the Chilean president defended the evictions saying that the forces did the necessary to maintain public order.

However, not all Rapa Nui are supporting the movement. Alberto Hotus, __________________________, maintains that the islanders depend on Chile for food, telecommunications and healthcare.

"If we cut ties to Chile, we will return to eating pasture," he says.

Carlos Llancaqueo, _______________________, is cautious in his approach, saying that the authorities are preparing proposals to give the Rapanui more control over the land's finances. He also says that officials are moving ahead to improve the power grid, portable water systems and education in both the Rapa Nui language and Spanish.

So, will the Rapa Nui win the fight against the Chilean colonisers?

101 East looks at the Rapa Nui struggle to reclaim the right to govern their own land.

Watch:

The Fight For Rapanui

(Advanced) Jeff Wall

A sudden gust (after Hokusai)

He provokes anger, awe and huge prices for his controversial staged scenes of hostage situations and homeless shelters. The pioneer of ‘non-photography’ talks cliches, creative freedom – and his regrets.

“Like painting, my work is very much about composition. That is where the feeling flows – more so than in the expressions on faces or the possible social meanings. But I am not trying to imitate painting."

Read more:

Jeff Wall

elaborately staged 

spectacularly dishevelled

garishly backlit

meticulously choreographed

spectacularly hyperreal

harshly sunlit

You often find these rather florid pairings of adverbs ad adjectives in art writing. Why might that be?

Questions about the article:

1. What is the writer surprised to still find "linger(ing)" around Wall's work?

2. Why does Wall "not photograph"?

3. How have his images changed over his career?

4. What is "reportage"

5. Why might Approach be a "contentious" work?

6. Of the image entitled "Listener" Walls says:

"My work is to try and re-create the space in which this ominous event is occurring. My challenge is to photograph it properly.”

...What do you think his point is?

7. Which Nineteenth Century French painter is his big influence?

“In my time, I’ve been accused of being afraid to go out into the world to take pictures, like a so-called ‘real’ photographer does. And I’ve been accused of making art with a capital A – as if that, too, was a crime.”

8. After reading about Walls and his work, how do feel about it? What do think he's trying to do with photography?

The Lighthouse

Benjamin, Ann-Marie, Nils, Marianna, Cami, Leo, Mare, Laura, David, Iris, Lisa, Lotte, Boas 

C2.1 Class outside Michael Parekowhai's Lighthouse on Queens Wharf. 

(Advanced) Immigrant Nations

How does immigration result in the loss of familiar worlds, both for immigrants and for host societies? More importantly should a country belong to its inhabitants? Are we not all newcomers to the countries in which we are born? Phillip Adams hosts a discussion with three experts on the effects of mass immigration on Australia, Europe and North America

Radio

Immigrant Nations -Late Night Live

(Advanced Film / Lit SPIN) Operation Avalanche

Trailer:

Trailer

Watch the clip Reanimating Kubrick: Operation Avalanche. On the problems the filmmakers had to overcome and the processes they used in creating a "believable fake".

What is the premise of the film Operation Avalanche?
Why do the characters in the film visit Stanley Kubrick's set?
Why was it so important to have Kubrick appear in the film?
Why did the director initially assume it would be easy to have Kubrick appear in the film?
Why did it turn out to be a challenging task?
What story was Operation Avalanche based on?
Why did the director feel they couldn't use a lookalike in the film?
How did the crew get "lead in" footage for the sequences that were to feature Kubrick?
How did they create the rest of the 2001 set?
How did the visual effects person turn the archival photographs into 3d space?
How did they make Kubrick move?
How did they "reverse engineer" the photos?

Watch:

Operation Avalanche

(Intermediate) Signposting

Introduction:

What are "signposts" and why do we need them in public speaking?

Write down nine different types of signpost:

1. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
2. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
3. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
4. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
5. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
6. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
7. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
8. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________
9. Purpose: _______________ Example: _____________________

Watch:

Signposting